For the past decade, there are significant progresses in medical research. The Human Genome Project had finished. For the first time in history, we have decoded over 20,000 human genes. The stem cell researchers have already safely injected stem cells into patients with neurodegenerative diseases and spinal cord injuries and they have seen the potential to vastly improve lives. MRI and other medical imaging technologies continuously improved, more and more advanced electronic devices, sensors, networking, data mining technologies are used in hospitals. Despite these great achievements, most of us still rely on once or twice annual doctor visits to get our physicals. None of these great technologies is used to monitor our day-to-day health status, not mention more sophisticated day-to-day health analysis and disease detection. Many people jokes that they know their cars better than their bodies. In many ways, it is a true statement. There are over 100 sensors on a modern car. On the other hand, the sensor to monitor our vital life is close to zero.
Today, one out of four deaths in the United States is due to cardiac disease, and two out of five disease caused death in China is due to cardiovascular disease. Only 1% of new born have heart defects, combining these two facts, there is a very serious heart health degradation progressing in average people's life span. Most of annual physical checkup do not provide comprehensive heart exam unless doctors hear the complain of chest pain, short breathe . . . at this point, the degradation already progressed enough to make patient feel uncomfortable. Like all the life threatening disease, early detection is the key, because people can not only adjust habit to get long term benefit for heart, but keep themselves away from some stressful activities once some symptom showed up from the detection. Although medical researcher had warned that many chronicle diseases, like diabetes and unhealthy life styles, such as smoking, obesity can eventually cause heart problems, due to lack of effective long term monitoring device and analysis tool, how the heart disease gradually developed is still a mystery. There is a tremendous value to provide a household based device that can monitor and record the heart status and performance and also be able to understand the measurement not only in absolute numbers but also in past statistic and also to similar population. The information can motivate people to live in healthier life style and improve life quality.
The conventional stethoscope has proven to be useful tools for doctor in the past two hundred years. However, they are targeted to bulky, clinic oriented environment. To early detect cardiac abnormality development, it is beneficial to have a compact, ruggedized, self-explainable device and system solution be available in household to help general public understand the heart mechanical activity and electrical activity in their daily activities.
The electrocardiogram reflects the triggering signal of heart pumping. After the electrocardiogram peak, the heart pumps the blood into the heart; then drives them out. During this process, two distinct sounds are generated. When we monitor the electrocardiogram and phonocardiograph simultaneously, we can observe that the electrocardiogram will have a peak ahead of the two peaks in phonocardiograph. Although the time difference is very small for healthy people, it is very time critical for patients with heart diseases. Most of the heart failure and other forms of cardiovascular diseases are developed during a long span of time. It may easily take a decade to develop. At the early stage, there is no obvious discomfort on the patient side, and it is very hard to catch the abnormal heart behavior during a short period such as during the patient annual checkup. However, when the patient does feel the discomfort, it is usually too late. To effective prevent this kind of disease; it is extremely valuable to have a small, easy to carry and easy to use wearable device that can simultaneously monitor both electrocardiogram and phonocardiograph continuously. The data are automatically archived and compared against various disease patterns, or with the user's previous data. The abnormal trend of change can be observed and be prompted to the user or medical professionals to prevent the further development of the disease.
Although it is necessary to have a small and easy to use wearable device to patch on the heart of the user and simultaneously monitor the electrocardiogram and phonocardiograph, there are many challenges to develop this kind of device and related software. For the past two hundred years, to collect phonocardiogram, a heavy and bulky stethoscope head is employed. Meanwhile, the electrocardiogram device is also very bulky and cumbersome. It requires a set of wire and patches are attached to various part of the chest of the user. It makes impossible for a general user without advance medical knowledge or training to use them on a daily basis.
Further challenge comes that all the prior arts require the medical professionals to interpolate the results. However, when this device becomes a general household health monitoring equipment, millions of people may use it on a daily basis. It immediately becomes impractical to rely on medical professionals to scan through the sampled data and interpolate them. It is necessary to have a backend analysis software to automatically analyze and screen the data; identify the abnormal pattern or trend and feedback to user or medical professionals for further monitoring or examination.